Leadership

Luke Tallon, Scientific Director is a molecular biologist and bioinformatician with more than 20 years of experience leading and managing genomics projects and laboratories. Over this time, he has developed expertise in high-throughput sequencing technology, bioinformatics, and genomic analysis and has more than 85 publications in these areas. He is responsible for scientific oversight of our operations, and directs the implementation and operation of high-throughput sequencing platforms, including multiple generations of Illumina, Pacific Biosciences, and Oxford Nanopore technologies, the Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS), sequence data processing and quality control, and analysis services including genome assembly, sequence variant detection and annotation, transcriptome/expression analysis, and metagenome/metatranscriptome analysis. Luke provides scientific guidance to researchers on the application of each sequencing platform and analysis of resulting data, and leads our project consultations with new clients.

Anup Mahurkar, CIO is the Chief Information Officer and the Director of the Informatics Resource Center at IGS. He has extensive experience in the field of genomics and health sciences where he has worked as a researcher, engineer, and manager over the past 30 years. During this time, he has overseen the work of scientists, engineers, system administrators, and managers in research environments. His areas of expertise include genome analysis, web-based analysis and visualization tool development, building scalable analysis systems, database design, and high-throughput computing architecture and application development. He leads a team of more than 25 researchers, engineers, analysts, and IT professionals responsible for production bioinformatics activities, custom bioinformatics analysis, new tool development, and systems engineering. His group also develops visualization tools including Manatee, Circelator, Probing Outcomes Data with Visual Analytics (POD-Vis), and Gene Expression Analysis Resource (gEAR). Over the past 15 years his group has analyzed thousands of ‘omics data sets. This work has led to over 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals from the group.

Mike Humphrys, Technical Director has more than 15 years of laboratory experience with a focus on microbiome characterization, laboratory automation, and assay development. He led the implementation of the high-throughput Microbiome Services Laboratory, now part of Maryland Genomics, which routinely processes >50,000 samples annually for characterization by amplicon, metagenome, metatranscriptome, and genome sequencing. In addition to leading our microbiome services, Mike is responsible for laboratory R&D, new assay development, and automation systems. He is also the technical director of our clinical Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory and works closely with Dr. Iyer on developing and implementing our clinical assays.

Lisa DeShong Sadzewicz, PhD, Administrative Director has more than 25 years of experience in laboratory management and high-throughput operations. She is responsible for project and financial management, including budgeting, invoicing, scheduling and monitoring projects. She oversees the day-to-day laboratory operations and personnel. Lisa has extensive large-scale project management experience and coordinates all Maryland Genomics projects to ensure smooth transitions at each phase of the project, including sample receipt, quality control, sample preparation, sequencing, analysis, and data delivery to our clients.

Ramaswamy Iyer, Ph.D., D(ABMGG), FACMG, Director, Clinical Genomics has 20+ years of operation of CAP/CLIA-certified clinical diagnostic laboratories. Dr. Iyer directs the Maryland Genomics, Translational Diagnostics Laboratory (MGTDL), a clinical genomics laboratory that develops and implements validated assays supporting delivery of high-quality, patient care, as well as basic and clinical research activities. Dr. Iyer brings broad and deep scientific, clinical/diagnostic expertise, and operational management experience in academic, government and industrial settings. Significant previous positions held by Dr. Iyer include (a) VP, IGL, Research Lab and Biobanks at the Inova Translational Medicine Institute (ITMI), where as a founding member of ITMI, he operationalized a comprehensive, CAP/CLIA-certified core service that provided genomic and biobanking services for research, clinical trials and patient care, serving internal and external/commercial clients; (b) (One of the) Program manager for the ‘The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA)’ program at the NCI, coordinating centralized biorepositories that provided high-quality analytes for cancer genome sequencing; (c) Founding director of an esoteric genetic testing laboratory and an institute-wide biobank at the University of Michigan. Dr. Iyer has also directed clinical laboratories at UCLA, Myriad Genetics, and Nationwide (previously Columbus) Childrens Hospital. Dr. Iyer was trained in Clinical Molecular Genetics and Clinical Cytogenetics at UCLA-Cedar Sinai in Los Angeles. He is board-certified by the American Board of Medical Genetics (ABMG) in Clinical Molecular Genetics and is a fellow of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG).